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More "Bashfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chestnuts. On seeing me, she attempted to rise as if to meet me half-way, and her gesture was quite sufficient to encourage me to approach. She received me with a blushing look and tremulous lip, which I perceived, and which increased my own bashfulness. The strangeness of our situation was so embarrassing, that we remained some time without finding a word to say to each other. At last, with a timid and scarcely intelligible gesture, she motioned to me to sit down ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... hated ceremony. It was acceptable to hear a lady address him as "Martin," and not Mr. Martin or Master Martin, which form would have lost her his good graces for ever. Worse, if possible, than ceremony was the other extreme of slipshod familiarity. The slight tone of bashfulness, the scarcely perceptible hesitation, was considered perfectly ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... marred by unhealthy sullenness and an anxious, fretful expression, was hanging on every word; while the tall schoolgirl Ella, and the smaller, bright-eyed Katie, were standing behind their mother, trying to hide their awkwardness and bashfulness, till Tom came to the rescue by finding them seats, with a whispered hint to Katie that it was not good manners to stare so at a stranger. Edna saw everything with quiet, amused eyes; she satisfied Christine's curiosity, and found replies ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... respect and bashfulness, 'O reverend sir, I have heard of your great wisdom, and your kindness to those who are willing to give up the pleasures of this world for the sake of the next. I am tired of the disgraceful life I ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... He ate heavy meat three times a day, but took little or no exercise. The pimples on his face became worse and worse. He grew peevish and nervous. He hated girls, and when in their society was a very bull-calf for bashfulness and awkward self-consciousness. At times the strangest and most morbid fancies took possession of him, chief of which was that every one was looking at him while he was walking ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... and more than once expressed her opinion that a young member would be better to sit in silence at least for one session, he was not driven to the mortification of feeling that he was incurring her contempt by his bashfulness. As regarded the men among whom he lived, I think he was almost annoyed at finding that no one seemed to expect that he should speak. Barrington Erle, when he had first talked of sending Phineas down to Loughshane, had predicted for ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... descending to the ground-floor, asked Madonna Porzia what she was doing there. She answered with a smile: "I am amusing myself by watching this worthy young man at his drawing; he is as good as he is handsome." I had by this time acquired a trifle of assurance, mixed, however, with some honest bashfulness; so I blushed and said: "Such as I am, lady, I shall ever be most ready to serve you." The gentlewoman, also slightly blushing, said: "You know well that I want you to serve me;" and reaching me the lily, told me to take it away; and gave me besides twenty golden crowns which she had in her ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... commanded Mr. Bryan, inwardly highly amused at the girl's bashfulness in venturing in when she saw a stranger seated at ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... who was never troubled with bashfulness, went up and seated herself beside Lady Isabel. "Good evening, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... who condescends to be so treated. Perhaps the love is occasionally on the man's side; perhaps on the lady's. Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistaken insensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere vacuity for sweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan. Perhaps some beloved female subscriber has arrayed an ass in the splendour and glory of her imagination; admired his dulness as manly simplicity; worshipped his selfishness ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the shutters of the Day:—in other words, more than a dozen hours had passed. Corporal Brock had been relieved by Mr. Redcap, the latter by Mr. Sicklop, the one-eyed gentleman; Mrs. John Hayes, in spite of her sorrows and bashfulness, had followed the example of her husband, and fallen asleep by his side—slept for many hours—and awakened still under the guardianship of Mr. Brock's troop; and all parties began anxiously to expect the return of the ambassador, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his only official one, and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work and its interests. The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help when it was needed, and for bashfulness both when it was needed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... without once making a sign of taking any. But if one raised a lid, they were not long in showing themselves. Then they all came in a great hurry and flocked about the sledges in the hope of getting a little extra bit. I am at a loss to explain this behaviour; that bashfulness was not at the root of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... virginal purity, and the temperate diet so helpful in preserving thy virginity uncontaminated. And where is now that grave deportment, and that modest mien, and that plain attire which so become a virgin, and that beautiful blush of bashfulness, and that comely paleness—the delicate bloom of abstinence and vigils, that outshines every ruddier glow. How often in prayer that thou mightest keep unspotted thy virginal purity hast thou poured forth thy tears! How many letters hast ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time afforded him a full view of her face. "How many years have passed since first we met!" she resumed, in a voice which she mainly endeavored to maintain at its former pitch of composure, and eying him with daring bashfulness. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... of the Middle Ages, there was then a healthy sensualism, that sprang from a rugged and happy native disposition among the people, and that Christianity was unable to suppress. The hypocritical prudery and bashfulness; the secret lustfulness, prevalent to-day, that hesitates and balks at calling things by their right name, and to speak about natural things in a natural way;—all that was foreign to the Middle Ages. Neither was that age ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... ranked as a chief amongst his followers, and shared his master's board, ate considerably more than the two white men together. Mangaleesu and Kalinda, who had been invited, at first hung back, but overcoming their bashfulness at length came and joined the party, and did ample justice to the food offered them. At last, little Unozingli, the white boy, or Lionel, as his protector determined to call him, crept out from the corner of the waggon, and, tempted by the smell of the viands, came and placed himself by the side ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the incapacity and dullness of the poor Subanos. The latter, as they are so unused to intercourse with us, and so shut up in their own lives, had no arguments to oppose to what they did not understand; and showed their wonder, surprise, and bashfulness in brute silence. For that reason, where the Orangcayas govern (which are almost all villages of the Subanos or Indians of the mountain), there is scarce one who enjoys liberty. Those chiefs hold them so under their power, that they regard the very leaders and chiefs of the Subano nation ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... ill-will of the men. It was necessary to startle them into the revelations which I required them to make for their own good. And I did startle them. I became thoroughly used to it, and soon lost my native bashfulness;—but sometimes my visits astonished the retiring inhabitants of country houses. I did, however, do my work, and can look back upon what I did with thorough satisfaction. I was altogether in earnest; and I believe ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... reading to one another his letters. They laughed together over his jokes, mildly, as befitted persons for whom a sense of humour might conceivably be a Satanic snare, and trembled together at his dangers. Mary's affection was free from anything so degrading as passion, and she felt no bashfulness in reading Jamie's love-letters to his parents; she was too frank to suspect that there might be in them anything for her eyes alone, and too candid to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... we took the old buffalo-robe and a couple of rugs out to a straw-pile that had been hauled in to protect our winter perennials. There we indecorously reposed on our backs and went stargazing in comfort. And Gershom even forgot that painful bashfulness of his when he fell to talking about the planets. He slipped out of his shell and ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... so situated in life that they can never enter the brilliant sphere in which honest women move, whether for want of a coat, or from their bashfulness, or from the failure of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... The burden of keeping this question had been overriding Hiram's bashfulness since she ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... get your mamma to let me stay?" said Virginie, with the bashfulness of a child; "haven't you a little place like yours, with white curtains and sanded floor, to give to poor little Virginie to learn to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... deeply as she said it, and the sight of her pretty color so moved the young man that, having the bashfulness of his native crops, he rushed out into the glory of the sunset, and sat upon the granite boulder watching until the gray, the purple, and then the black had washed out the white steeples from ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... carried on. The space was almost impracticably small; and the Irish wenches combined the extreme of bashfulness about this innocent display with a surprising impudence and roughness of address. Most often, either the fiddle lifted up its voice unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be footing it and snapping fingers on the landing. And such was the eagerness of the brother to display ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lodged him. He then warned his friend Peele to amend his ways; but Peele, like him, died in distress and debt, one of the last letters he wrote being an imploring letter to Burleigh asking for relief,—"Long sickness," said he, "having so enfeebled me as maketh bashfulness almost impudency." Spenser died forsaken, and in want. Ben Jonson says of him that "he died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty broad pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex," adding, "he was sorrie he had no time to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... be the wife}. At first she is silent; and, fixing her eyes upon her father's countenance, she is in confusion, and fills her eyes with the warm tears. Cinyras, supposing this to be {the effect} of virgin bashfulness, bids her not weep, and dries her cheeks, and gives her kisses. On these being given, Myrrha is too much delighted; and, being questioned what sort of a husband she would have, she says, 'One like thyself.' But he praises the answer not {really}[45] understood by him, and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Here rills of oily eloquence in soft Meanders lubricate the course they take; The modest speaker is asham'd and grieved To engross a moment's notice; and yet begs. Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts, However trivial all that he conceives. Sweet bashfulness! it claims at least this praise; The dearth of information and good sense, That it foretells us, always comes to pass. Cataracts of declamation thunder here; There forests of no meaning spread the page, In which all comprehension wanders lost; While fields of pleasantry amuse us there With merry ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... irresoluteness; but I do not know to what this irresoluteness should be attributed. He has never been a warrior, though very much a soldier. He has never, through his own effort, succeeded in being a good courtier, though he has always intended to be one. That air of bashfulness and of shyness which you observe in him in social life has given him in matters of business an apologetic air. He has always fancied that he needed to apologize; and this—in conjunction with his 'Maximes,' which do not err on ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the period of growth and preparation as much as possible. But purity and innocence may be prolonged too late; innocence is really no more becoming to adults than a rattle or a rubber consoler, and the bashfulness that hampers this discussion, that permits it only in a furtive silly sort of way, has its ugly consequences in shames and cruelties, in miserable households and pitiful crises, in the production of countless, needless, and unhappy lives. Indeed, too often we carry our decency so far as to make ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... they heard the pit-pit-pit chuckling down the hill. Milt's casual grin changed to bashfulness as Claire ran into the road, her arms wide in a lovely gesture of supplication, and cried, "We been waiting for you so long! One of my brake-bands is burnt out, and ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... in the street other boys of my age, very proud of their slip of a sweetheart, who would exultingly show me love-letters, photographs, and flowers, and who asked me if I hadn't a sweetheart with whom to correspond. A feeling of inexplicable bashfulness tied my tongue, and I only replied with an enigmatic and haughty smile. And when they questioned me as to what I thought of the beauty of their little maidens, I would shrug my shoulders and ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... one response, either verbally or mentally, did Jacquelina make. The priest passed over her silence, naturally ascribing it to bashfulness, and honestly taking ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... exclaimed, not noticing his entirely unnecessary bashfulness. "And that is just what I want to talk to you about." With which I produced my ancestral treasure, and with our heads close together we dove into it, didn't come up until after ten o'clock, ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... half turned away, as if in bashfulness. Her view of his profile almost moved her to laughter. She glanced through the pages ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... it his handkerchief, which was tied round something which chinked as he pressed it in. Then he replaced the brick, and went to bed. He said nothing about the bank in the morning nor about the hole in the mill-wall; and he parried Mrs. Lake's questions with gawky grins and well-assumed bashfulness. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... on; and then out came, with great diffidence, and many apologies, and a bashfulness which sat very awkwardly upon him, a proposal of speedy solemnization: which, he said, would put all right; and make my first three or four months (which otherwise must be passed in obscurity and apprehension) a round of visits and visitings to and from all his relations; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... She entered with bashfulness, as I thought; in a pretty confusion, for having carried her apprehensions too far. Sullen and slow moved she towards the tea-table.—Dorcas present, busy in tea-cup preparations. I took her reluctant hand, and pressed ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... drew some beer, and they sat down very cosily; and soon were chatting so comfortably, that Master Froggy thought he should soon get rid of his bashfulness, and then should be able to ask pretty Mrs. Mousey to marry him. Presently their little hostess proposed a song, and called upon Froggy to oblige; but, "Really," he replied, "I must be excused, ...
— The Frog Who Would A Wooing Go • Charles Bennett
... she could play—a duet which she had that morning been practising with Clara. It was very kind, and Marian knew it; for Caroline had said that she never liked that duet, and was heartily tired of it; but all the acknowledgement her strange bashfulness would allow her to make was a grateful look, and a ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... stopped in his turn, not from bashfulness, but rather like a man who desires more carefully ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... himself of the opportunities afforded by his situation, to involve his pupil in the toils of a mutual passion. Honour and gratitude alike forbade such a line of conduct, even had it been consistent with the natural bashfulness, simplicity, and innocence of his disposition. To sigh and suffer in secret, to form resolutions of separating himself from a situation so fraught with danger, and to postpone from day to day the accomplishment of a resolution so prudent, was all to which the tutor found himself equal; and it ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... deceive the youthful critic, and, in some of the notices referred to, the signs of youth are manifest in the ill-balanced enthusiasm, as well as in the employment of phrases of praise which the old hand shirks with a curious kind of bashfulness. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I sat again before her parlour organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red fingers, while she, beside me, made canvas ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... some awkwardness in walking side by side with Rudin on the same little path; afterwards she felt more at ease. He began to question her about her occupations and how she liked the country. She replied not without timidity, but without that hasty bashfulness which is so often taken for modesty. ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... placed an easy-chair near the railing of the deck for me, paid the triple fare and discreetly kept at a distance. His bashfulness and timid reserve recommended him to my genuine admiration as much as if it had been pure amiability, or a desire to do me a good turn that had prompted him to ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... place, hidden in so deep a hollow as to be quite invisible from any distance. All the little cottage-girls whom we met, carrying their jugs and pitchers of water, curtseyed and wished us good morning with the prettiest air of bashfulness and good humour imaginable. One of them, a rosy, beautiful child, who proudly informed us that she was six years old, put down her jug at a cottage-gate and ran on before to show us the way, delighted ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... what palpitations, what untimely tremors are yours! and what mirth is theirs who witness your confusion! 'Who was the king of the Achaeans?' is the question: and your answer, as likely as not, 'A thousand sail.' With the charitable this passes for bashfulness; but to the impudent you are a craven, and to the ill-natured a yokel. This first experience teaches you that the condescensions of the great are not unattended with danger; and as you depart you pronounce upon yourself a ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... have known it. Only to-day the girls of the village came to me to buy a charm to keep their lovers safe in war. There was not one but dared to ask, even though she would not speak her lover's name for bashfulness. See, one of them gave me this ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... penance, take heed of discouraging those who begin to discover the wounds of their souls to you, by appearing too rashly and too hastily severe. How enormous soever their sins may be, hear them, not only with patience, but with mildness; help out even their bashfulness, by testifying to them your compassion, and not seeming to be amazed at what you hear. Insinuate into them, that you have heard in confession sins of a much more crying nature: and, lest they should despair of pardon for their ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... is a greatly overrated exemplar. It stimulates a certain bashfulness, hangs its head, and passed as modest among our simple grandparents. Its special merit is its perfume, and it pretends to wish to hide that from every eye. But, withal, the fragrance is as far-reaching as any I know. It ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... journeys with Turner. While visiting at the rectory Turner regularly attended church in proper form; and finally he wrote a note to Mr. Trimmer, alluding to his affection for one of the rector's kinswomen, and suggesting: "If Miss —— would but waive bashfulness, or in other words make an offer instead of expecting one, the same [Lodge] might change occupiers." But Turner was doomed to disappointment, and never made another attempt at matrimony. In 1814 Turner commenced his contributions of drawings to illustrate "Cook's Southern Coast," ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... her regularly every Sunday, and it was soon decided that they should be married in season to enable her to pack the fall butter. This decision she, for sometime, delayed to communicate to Emily, from sheer bashfulness. She could not, she said, when she at last had wrought herself up to what appeared to her the very pinnacle of boldness, make up her mind to tell her before, for the life of her, but then, she did suppose that Simon kind of had her promise that she would ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the rays on a sign-post picture of the sun. Following her came the boy, feeling awkward in his new clothes, and scraping with his left leg till the process was put a stop to by his master's entering into conversation with him. Hester's beauty was really so striking, as with a blushing bashfulness, she for the first time enacted the mistress before her husband's eyes, that it was impossible not to observe it. Margaret glanced towards her brother, and they exchanged smiles. But the effect of Margaret's smile was that Mr Hope's died away, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... thought; refined, as all English are, and good-humored. There is in him an air of great superiority that is very satisfactory. He lives with his college set, ... and has the air of one who is accustomed to be petted and indulged by those he lives with. Take away Hawthorne's bashfulness, and let him talk easily and fast, and you would have a pretty good Tennyson. I told him that his friends and I were persuaded that it was important to his health to make an instant visit to Paris, and that I was to go on Monday ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... This was rather too intimate a description, but bashfulness or diffidence she knew were not among ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... redeemed by grace the fashionable dress and proud look give place to a sweet Christian modesty. A humble heart and a fashionable dress are incompatible. Shamefacedness is derived from aidos in the Greek, and has "modesty" and "bashfulness" for its ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... such chain enfeebles and almost annihilates the mental powers. Endued with exquisite sensibility, his wit never gave the smallest wound, even to the grossest ignorance of the world, or the most morbid hypochondriac bashfulness.' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... joy, Margaret saw Peter waiting for them under guard, and dressed also in the Christian garments which they had begged might be supplied to him at their cost. She sprang to his side, none hindering her, and, forgetting her bashfulness, suffered him to embrace her before them all, asking him how he had fared since they ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... asked with a smile that made us feel we had never quarreled, never parted, but were at home in the Wilderness. I need not tell the answer. I had got quit of my bashfulness on the subject of Gretna Green and postchaises with a vengeance; and then and there I suggested a trip to that delectable region, and scorned all the objections she attempted to make about our respective fathers, and family quarrels, and all the chimeras ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... far gone to pour forth the babble of good plump grandmothers; she adored the child in secret with the bashfulness of a young girl, without knowing how to fondle him. Sometimes she took him on her knees, and gazed at him for a long time with her pale eyes. When the little one, frightened by her mute white visage, began to cry, she seemed perplexed by what ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of their own accord, yet there are a few that never come except at the asking for; and the chiefest of these is woman's love. So, resolving to profit by this knowledge, he did precisely what any wise and reasonable man would have done in his place,—overcame his troublesome bashfulness, and made the lady an offer of marriage; which she, precisely as any wise and reasonable woman would have done in her place, modestly accepted. The business that had called him to Williamsburg being at last disposed of, Washington took ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... past and present, choosing their choicest pieces; and I listened not knowing whether more to marvel at her beauty and loveliness or at the charm of her style of declamation. Then said she, 'Is that bashfulness of thine gone?' and I said, 'Yes, by Allah!' so she rejoined, 'Then, if thou wilt, recite us somewhat.' So I repeated to her a number of poems by old writers, and she applauded, saying, 'By Allah, I did not think to find such culture among the trade folk, the sons of the bazar!' Then she ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... again to submit to the officious intervention of my indefatigable servitor. Various other dishes followed, the chief manifesting the most hospitable importunity in pressing us to partake, and to remove all bashfulness on our part, set us no despicable example ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... graceful figure, and viewed her lovely features with the more intense interest, as he imagined it was only her surprise that allowed him the opportunity, and that she would soon turn away from his gaze with increased bashfulness. But the event was the very reverse of what he expected; for, after looking at him for a long while, she became more confident, moved nearer, knelt down before him, and while she played with a gold medal which he wore attached to a rich ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... sinister denouement of some nightmare. On awakening, with limbs stiff and tired, shivering all over with discomfort and cold, their faces marbled with livid blotches, they contemplated one another in bewilderment astonished to see themselves there. And they displayed strange bashfulness towards each other, ashamed at ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... sorrow, without consideration or bashfulness, and the young doctor felt that he was witnessing an unpleasant scene from life in the outskirts of the town. He had done his duty and ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... nothing but the weathered birch-leaves spun down the flooded glen of the Conquhar. Old Royle regarded the best fishing in the water as his birthright, and every rival as an intruder. He showed this too, for there was no bashfulness about Old Royle. Young men who had just begun to fish consulted him as to where they should begin on the morrow. Old Royle was of opinion that there was not a single fish within at least five miles of the hotel. Indeed, he thought of "taking a trap" in the morning ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... coolness towards the Dauphine. He encouraged it, and even threw many obstacles in the way of the consummation of the marriage. The apartments of the young couple were placed at opposite ends of the palace, so that the Dauphin could not approach that of his Dauphine without a publicity which his bashfulness ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... cause of worry is bashfulness. One who is bashful finds in his intercourse with his fellows many worries. His hands and feet are too large, he blushes at a word, he doesn't know what to say or how, he is confused if attention is directed his way, his thoughts fly to the ends of the earth the moment ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... of the king, was confirmed in his first idea; that is to say, that love thoughts were hidden under all these fine words. This time, political cunning, keen as it was, made a mistake; this color was not caused by the bashfulness of a juvenile passion, but only by the painful ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... recovered from his bashfulness, and was feeling rather well pleased with himself, so he ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... May, who did not know what bashfulness was, 'I wish I might go and see him, too. I should so like to know if he has ever seen the island where Robinson ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... explained, "'twas on account of my bashfulness. Your mother, she wanted to sit along with me and hold hands, so—. Oh, all right; all right. You can show a glim now, Serena, if you want to. I'll ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the people is most free, where it is made or given in such a manner that it can neither oblige nor disoblige another, nor through fear of an enemy, or bashfulness toward a ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... secondary affections, relating the impressions of the environment with one another and with our impulses in quite different ways from those mere associations of coexistence and succession which are practically all that pure empiricism can admit. Take the love of drunkenness; take bashfulness, the terror {187} of high places, the tendency to sea-sickness, to faint at the sight of blood, the susceptibility to musical sounds; take the emotion of the comical, the passion for poetry, for ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... though partly addressed to Albert, was still more directed to his immediate neighbour, the young Scotsman, who seemed, from bashfulness, or some other reason, rather shy of his intimacy. To one or two personal touches from Wildrake's elbow, administered during his last speech, by way of a practical appeal to him in particular, he only answered, "Misunderstandings were to be expected when ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Malay is impassive. He exhibits a reserve, diffidence, and even bashfulness, which is in some degree attractive, and leads the observer to thinly that the ferocious and bloodthirsty character imputed to the race must be grossly exaggerated. He is not demonstrative. His feelings of surprise, admiration, or ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... no kind of accident threw you in my way. That best of men, Virgil, long ago, and after him, Varius, told you what I was. When first I came into your presence, I spoke a few words in a broken manner (for childish bashfulness hindered me from speaking more); I did not tell you that I was the issue of an illustrious father: I did not [pretend] that I rode about the country on a Satureian horse, but plainly what I really was; you answer (as your custom is) a few ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... went home to my lodgings in a state of perfect ecstasy. The vague half presentiment, half suspicion, which had been arising within me, had vanished. The sudden constraint in Liza's manner towards me I ascribed to maidenly bashfulness, timidity.... Hadn't I read a thousand times over in many books that the first appearance of love always agitates and alarms a young girl? I felt supremely happy, and was already making all sorts ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... man in his bashfulness, "that part of the discourse which related to the flying of kites has interested me greatly, and I am ready to contend that kites fly, not, as many say, through the influence of a demon or spirit which inhabits the materials, but through the ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Modesty.—We may be both bashful and impudent. Bashfulness injurious. Set up for just what we ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... great conversational abilities and immense power of small talk, so that Verdant felt quite at ease in her society, and found his natural timidity and quiet bashfulness to be greatly diminished, even if they were not altogether put on one side. They were always such capital friends, and Miss Patty was so kind and thoughtful in making Verdant appear to the best advantage, and in looking over any little gaucheries ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Dick to congratulate him and examine the piece, he stood with a mingled feeling of bashfulness and delight at his unexpected good fortune. Recovering himself suddenly he seized his old rifle, and, dropping quietly to the outskirts of the crowd, while the men were still busy handling and discussing the merits of the prize, went up, unobserved, to a boy of about thirteen years of age, and touched ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... he was such a puppy!" said John to himself, as he stood in a sort of angry bashfulness, envying the man that was so ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... she endeavored to appear unconscious of everything that passed; but all my stupidity could not hinder me from concluding that she partook of my embarrassment, perhaps, my transports, and was only hindered by a bashfulness like mine, without even that supposition giving me power to surmount it. Five or six years older than myself, every advance, according to my idea, should have been made by her, and, since she did nothing to encourage mine, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... fear of not being properly appreciated, that slight estimation of the neglect of the world, which also characterized Raymond. But then Perdita thought more constantly of others than he; and part of her bashfulness arose from a wish to take from those around her a sense of inferiority; a feeling which never crossed her mind. From the circumstances of her birth and education, Idris would have been better fitted for the formulae of ceremony; but the very ease which accompanied such actions ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... fear on the organic side, but the accompanying movements of avoidance were, at the same time, a powerful attraction to the male. And we have in this, as in all expressions of fear—shame, guilt, timidity, bashfulness—an affective bodily state growing out of the strain thrown upon the attention in the effort of the organism to accommodate itself to its environment. The essential nature of the reaction is already fixed in types of animal life where the operation of disgust is out of the question, and ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... and he walked up to her without bashfulness or embarrassment. Had they all been compliant and gracious to him he would have been as bashful as his love; but now his temper was hot. "Good-bye, Susan," and she took his hand, and he held hers till he had finished. "And remember this, I look upon you as my promised wife, and I don't ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... his bashfulness and could associate with grown-up books, then he was admitted to the company of Scott, and Thackeray, and Dickens, who were and are, as far as one can see, to be the leaders of society. My fond recollection goes back to an evening in the early sixties when a father ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... green recess Of her night-bower, Beaming with bashfulness, Spoke the bright flower:— "Tho' morn should lend her "Its sunniest splendor, "What would the Rose be, "Unsung ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... strophe died away, the valves of the shell reopened, and discovered Aphrodite crouching on one knee within. She raised her head, and gazed around the vast circle of seats. A mild surprise was on her countenance, which quickened into delightful wonder, and bashfulness struggling with the sense of new enjoyment and new powers. She glanced downward at herself; and smiled, astonished at her own loveliness; then upward at the sky; and seemed ready, with an awful joy, to spring up into the boundless void. Her whole figure dilated; she seemed ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... hooves, their necks curved by the check rein and their black and blonde manes flowing over the proud arch, lustrous and wrinkled like satin, were ranged in a glittering hemicycle. They affected my friend like the youth and beauty of his earliest evening parties; he experienced a sense of bashfulness, of sickening personal demerit. He could not have had the audacity to bid on one of those superb creatures, if all the Chevaliers together had whispered him that here at last was ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... with a smile, "if we can not get pretty Susan a wedding-dress, and any thing else she may need. Before a week is over you shall be mine host of the Keswick Inn. And now," she concluded, gayly, "go and make your arrangements with Susan, and don't let any foolish bashfulness on her part prevent you from hastening matters. It would not do for you to let this chance slip through your fingers. I will see that she is ready. Her ladyship has something for her too, and will not let her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... always the peace-maker, and now, when he rose with his engaging smile, his voice fell like oil upon the troubled waters, and his bright face was full of the becoming bashfulness which afflicts youths of seventeen when touching upon such subjects of newly acquired interest as girls and their pleasant ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... an odd mixture of bashfulness and obstinacy. But when he's drunk, he's as loving as the monster in The Tempest, and much after the same manner. To give bother his due, he has something of good-nature, and does not always ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... sudden coquettish pose and half-affected bashfulness of the girl; he was thinking only of the ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... symptoms of displeasure in the looks of both the mother and the son, yet, regardless of consequences, I ventured, uninvited, to enter the house. In order to shake off the restraint which I felt my society imposed, I found it absolutely necessary to divest myself of bashfulness, and to exert such conversational powers as I possessed. I succeeded so well that the discourse soon became lively and animated; and what chiefly delighted me was, that she, for whose sake I had ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... married now, babes?" said the Advocate, and I tried to answer him as we made our way to the vestry—I stumbling and self-abased, Irma with the certainty and calmness of a widow at least thrice removed from the first bashfulness of a bride. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... bashfulness was up in arms at the very idea, but at length he considered to ask Mrs. Armstrong for the permission. It was granted, as soon as the lady was convinced that the desire for more of her daughter's society was a genuine one, and thereafter ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... got over their bashfulness, and asked the name of everything they saw, which Jeannette was always ready to tell them. Their attempts at talking ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... coyness of a young girl; that she doubted not but Maria would soon be convinced what was her true happiness; and that a little perseverance and assiduity on his side, and authority on theirs, would remove all the scruples, bashfulness alone had created in her: 'No, madam,' answered he, with some impatience, 'there is somewhat more than all this you have mentioned, against me;—there is a rooted detestation to me in the very soul of Maria, which as I cannot but ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... that he lived with a fast set, as people say now—"the Depravers" or "Destroyers"; though he loved them little, "whose actions I ever did abhor, that is, their Destruction of others, amongst whom I yet lived with a kind of shameless bashfulness." In short, the "Hell-Fire Club" of that day numbered a reluctant Saint among its members! It was no Christian gospel, but the Hortensius of Cicero which won him from this perilous society. "It altered my affection, and made me address my prayers to Thee, O Lord, and gave me other desires ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... myself, as though Thy friendship I to mere good fortune owe. No chance it was secured me thy regards, But Virgil first, that best of men and bards, And then kind Varius mentioned what I was. Before you brought, with many a faltering pause, Dropping some few brief words (for bashfulness Robbed me of utterance) I did not profess That I was sprung of lineage old and great, Or used to canter round my own estate On Satureian barb, but what and who I was as plainly told. As usual, you Brief answer make me. I ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... not going into the church?" he inquired, gazing at them complacently, yet with a mixture of bashfulness in his look—a sentiment not by any means the result of awe of their station, but only of appreciation of their elegance and youth. Before gentlemen—such as Moore or Helstone, for instance—William was ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... sir, for I can't account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he said to me, solemn-like, 'Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord Jesus to make you whole?' I could not speak a word, partly from bashfulness, I suppose, for I was but ten years old. So he followed it up, as they say: 'Then you ought to be at school,' says he. I said nothing, because I couldn't. But never since then have I given in as long as I could stand. And I can stand now, and lift my hammer, too," he said, as he took the horse-shoe ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... was about seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, "an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... walls behind which his social affections and sympathies were supposed to be intrenched. Had her mission been in behalf of any other cause, she would have drawn off her forces upon some pretext, and effected an ignominious retreat. Nerved by the thought of Mabel's bashfulness and solicitude, and Frederic's strangerhood, she ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... top rail of the fence he could see the gray roof of the Hermit's cabin, silvered with the radiance of the full moon. At no time was Kagh troubled with bashfulness and now, under the influence of that flooding radiance, he decided to investigate the cabin and the clearing. The fence, ending in a rough wall of field stone, made a capital highway along which he shuffled ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... settle what to do. Afraid, on the one hand, O king, of the reproach of friends if she obeyed the deity, and, on the other, of his curse if she disobeyed him, the damsel at last, O foremost of kings, said these words unto that god, in accents tremulous with bashfulness, 'O god, as my father and mother and friends are still living, this violation of duty on my part should not take place. If, O god, I commit this unlawful act with thee, the reputation of this race shall be sacrificed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... seats, and crowded round him. Warmly, affectionately, Edward greeted them one and all, and rapidly answered the innumerable questions of Percy; defended his sister from all share in his concealment, of which Herbert and Emmeline laughingly accused her. The flush of almost painful bashfulness still lingered on his cheek, as he marked the eyes of all fixed upon him, strangers as well as friends; but as he turned in the direction of his aunt, and his eye fell on the venerable figure of his revered preceptor, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... lips, swung his legs against his horse's sides, and fell into a jog-trot in the direction indicated. I looked after him till his peaked cap was hidden behind the branches. This second stranger was not in the least like his predecessor in exterior. His face, plump and round as a ball, expressed bashfulness, good-nature, and humble meekness; his nose, also plump and round and streaked with blue veins, betokened a sensualist. On the front of his head there was not a single hair left, some thin brown tufts stuck out behind; there was an ingratiating twinkle ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... give few entertainments for lack of ready money. They spend much of their time in needle-work and gossip, sitting like Turkish sultanas on divans or the floor. They do not rise at your entrance or departure. They converse in a very loud, unmusical voice. We never detected bashfulness in the street or parlor. They go to mass every morning, and make visits of etiquette on Sundays. They take more interest in political than in domestic affairs. Dust and cobwebs are unmistakable signs of indifference. Brooms ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... But as Lady Laura always recommended patience, and more than once expressed her opinion that a young member would be better to sit in silence at least for one session, he was not driven to the mortification of feeling that he was incurring her contempt by his bashfulness. As regarded the men among whom he lived, I think he was almost annoyed at finding that no one seemed to expect that he should speak. Barrington Erle, when he had first talked of sending Phineas down to Loughshane, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... perceive symptoms of displeasure in the looks of both the mother and the son, yet, regardless of consequences, I ventured, uninvited, to enter the house. In order to shake off the restraint which I felt my society imposed, I found it absolutely necessary to divest myself of bashfulness, and to exert such conversational powers as I possessed. I succeeded so well that the discourse soon became lively and animated; and what chiefly delighted me was, that she, for whose sake I had committed my present rudeness, became radiant ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... intelligent matter to take notice what is the natural bent of his pupil's capacity; and, taking that for his guide, to imitate the conduct of Socrates with his two scholars Theopompus and Ephorus, who, after remarking the lively genius of the former, and the mild and timid bashfulness of the latter, is reported to have said that he applied a spur to the one, and a curb to the other. The Orations now extant, which bear the name of Sulpicius, are supposed to have been written after his decease by my cotemporary P. Canutius, a ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... timidly, for her bashfulness made him a trifle bashful in return. "I should like to very much—for more reasons than one;" and he looked at her meaningly. "I'm getting tired, in some ways, of life abroad. I'd much prefer to come back now ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... adding, "Welcome and good cheer to thee! By Allah, from the day I saw thee sleep hath not been sweet to me nor hath food been pleasant." Quoth I, "Such hath also been my case: and I am thy slave, thy negro slave." Then we sat down to converse and I hung my head earthwards in bashfulness, but she delayed not long ere she set before me a tray of the most exquisite viands, marinated meats, fritters soaked in bee's[FN536] honeys and chickens stuffed with sugar and pistachio nuts, whereof we ate till we were satisfied. Then they brought basin and ewer and I washed my hands and we ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... turned towards the maid; she looked up at him with a shy glance and showed such a pretty face, such black eyes and smiling lips, that Zac for a moment hesitated, feeling quite paralyzed by an overflow of bashfulness. But it was not a time to stand on ceremony; and so honest Zac, without more ado, seized the girl in his arms, and bore her to the boat, where he deposited her carefully by the side of the other. Claude now followed, carrying the old man, whom he placed beside the ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... best." She helped out the white man's bashfulness. But as her interlocutor, appalled, laid no claim to the sentiment, she lifted the mittened hand to her eyes, and from under it scanned the white face through the lightly falling snow. The other hand, still held out to the comfort of the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... of modesty in the courtship of animals, where the modesty of the female was a form of fear on the organic side, but the accompanying movements of avoidance were, at the same time, a powerful attraction to the male. And we have in this, as in all expressions of fear—shame, guilt, timidity, bashfulness—an affective bodily state growing out of the strain thrown upon the attention in the effort of the organism to accommodate itself to its environment. The essential nature of the reaction is already fixed in types of animal life where the operation of disgust is out of the question, and in relations ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... down long and loose about their shoulders, a part of it on each side being carelessly platted, and sometimes rolled up into an awkward lump, instead of being neatly tied on the top of the head, as the Esquimaux women in most other parts are accustomed to wear it. The youngest female had much natural bashfulness and timidity, and we considered her to be the only unmarried one, as she differed from the other three in not being tattooed upon the face. Two of them had their hands tattooed also, and the old woman had a few marks of the same kind about each wrist. None ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Humfrey, he retreated behind the shelter of his mother's farthingale, where his presence was forgotten by every one else, and, after the rebuff just administered to Cicely, there was no inclination to bring him to light, or combat with his bashfulness. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he had time to answer, I fled in an agony of bashfulness to my refuge under the water-maple behind the house. I lingered there as long as I dared,—longer, indeed, than I had any right to linger, for I heard my mother's voice crying, "Janet!" and I well knew that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... and the bystanders thought his soul was just departing. Quiteria, all modesty and bashfulness, taking Basilius's right hand in hers, said: "No force would be sufficient to bias my will; and therefore, with all the freedom I have, I give thee my hand to be thy lawful wife, and receive thine, if it ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... straggling, picturesque place, hidden in so deep a hollow as to be quite invisible from any distance. All the little cottage-girls whom we met, carrying their jugs and pitchers of water, curtseyed and wished us good morning with the prettiest air of bashfulness and good humour imaginable. One of them, a rosy, beautiful child, who proudly informed us that she was six years old, put down her jug at a cottage-gate and ran on before to show us the way, delighted to be singled out from ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... tea, and Teddy so far improved on his bashfulness that he made grabs at several things which would have disagreed with him if I had let him follow his inclinations. He affably received my hints on table etiquette, and smiled with gentleness when I told him he had eaten enough. The little creature's ideas were like those of ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... may be supposed, made himself agreeable to Miss Julia Rogers and Miss Lucy Adair—for both girls were christened after their mothers. He was a fine handsome boy, full of life and spirits, without a particle of bashfulness. Murray inquired after Tom and Desmond. Tom was at sea on board the Roarer, a lately launched composite frigate, which was expected to perform wonders both under sail and steam, but she had already had to put back twice into Plymouth ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... way thither he was once or twice tempted to change his mind, and hesitated even at the very door. But the fear that his hesitation would be noticed by the few loungers before it, and the fact that some of them were already hesitating through bashfulness, determined him ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... her hand as if about to answer, then suddenly, as one who lost courage at the moment, relinquished his grasp; and drawing back as if afraid of what he had done, his dark countenance glowing with bashfulness, mixed with delight, he sat down by the fire on the opposite side from that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... would have been puzzled to say in just what this difference consisted, and much as they liked him, the ladies of her cult were not quite satisfied with him till they decided that it was marked by an anxiety, a timidity, which was perfectly fascinating in a man so far from bashfulness as he. That is, he did nice things for others without asking; but with her there was always an explicit pause, and an implicit prayer and permission, first. Upon this condition they consented to the glamour which he had for her, and which was evident to every ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in one form of speech, or have one set of manners at home, and another abroad, because in moments of confusion or bashfulness, such as every young person feels sometimes who is sensitive and modest, the every day mode ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... incapable of availing himself of the opportunities afforded by his situation, to involve his pupil in the toils of a mutual passion. Honour and gratitude alike forbade such a line of conduct, even had it been consistent with the natural bashfulness, simplicity, and innocence of his disposition. To sigh and suffer in secret, to form resolutions of separating himself from a situation so fraught with danger, and to postpone from day to day the accomplishment of a resolution so prudent, was all to which the tutor ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... on such nonsense—on hunting," began the girl, in great confusion. "I know—I only want one thing—to be of use to the people, and I can do nothing because I know nothing—" Her eyes were so truthful, so kind, and her expression of resoluteness and yet bashfulness was so touching, that Nekhludoff, as it often happened to him, suddenly felt as if he were in her position, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... as he pressed it in. Then he replaced the brick, and went to bed. He said nothing about the bank in the morning nor about the hole in the mill-wall; and he parried Mrs. Lake's questions with gawky grins and well-assumed bashfulness. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... she laughed, too much absorbed with thoughts of Sybil, to notice the extra warmth of his greeting, or a certain change of manner, that was a mingling of boldness, bashfulness, humility and coxcombery. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... I went home to my lodgings in a state of perfect ecstasy. The vague half presentiment, half suspicion, which had been arising within me, had vanished. The sudden constraint in Liza's manner towards me I ascribed to maidenly bashfulness, timidity.... Hadn't I read a thousand times over in many books that the first appearance of love always agitates and alarms a young girl? I felt supremely happy, and was already making all sorts of ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... with a display of genuine bashfulness; "eh-eh, honey! I 'fraid you all 'll set up dar un laugh me outer de house. I aint dast ter tell no tale 'long side er Brer Remus un Daddy Jack yer. I 'fraid I git it all ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... observe; no horse-play; oh, no, nothing of that sort. And these people fancy that earthquakes, volcanoes, and all such little escapades will be over, they will, in lawyer's phrase, 'cease and determine,' as soon as our Earth reaches the age of maidenly bashfulness. Poor thing! It's quite natural, you know, in a healthy growing girl. A little overflow of vivacity, a pirouette more or less, what harm should that do to any of us? Nobody takes more delight than I in the fawn-like sportiveness of an innocent girl, at this period ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a flood of tears, and not without some shadow of reason. By this time Launcelot was grown so reserved to his father, that he seldom saw him or any of his relations, except when he was in a manner forced to appear at table, and there his bashfulness seemed every day to increase. On the other hand, he had formed some very strange connexions. Every morning he visited the stable, where he not only conversed with the grooms and helpers, but scraped acquaintance ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... approached me with a frank and friendly air; I endeavored to be self-possessed and began to introduce myself, but he anticipated me. We sat down. His conversation, which was easy and agreeable, soon dissipated my awkward bashfulness; and I was already beginning to recover my usual composure, when the Countess suddenly entered, and I became more confused than ever. She was indeed beautiful. The Count presented me. I wished to appear at ease, but the more I tried to assume an air of unconstraint, the more awkward ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... that supreme moment what cold sweats, what palpitations, what untimely tremors are yours! and what mirth is theirs who witness your confusion! 'Who was the king of the Achaeans?' is the question: and your answer, as likely as not, 'A thousand sail.' With the charitable this passes for bashfulness; but to the impudent you are a craven, and to the ill-natured a yokel. This first experience teaches you that the condescensions of the great are not unattended with danger; and as you depart you pronounce upon yourself a ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... queer voice; the dolls could hardly understand him at first, but when his bashfulness wore off, he ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... said he, "to our salute? She must!" said he, "And then I will accost her gently—much to her surprise! - For knowing not I am with you here, when I speak up and call her dear A tenderness will fill her voice, a bashfulness ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the day with Aunt Clara, who had been entertaining some young guests, and invited Rose to meet them, for she thought it high time her niece conquered her bashfulness and saw a little of society. Dinner was over, and everyone had gone. Aunt Clara was resting before going out to an evening party, and Rose was waiting for Charlie to come ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... been invited to do so, as he was wont to do in the bygone happy days when they were official colleagues together. It was Meyer's custom never to look those whom he was addressing in the face, which bashfulness deprived him, of course, of the advantage of being able to read from their countenances what impression he was making upon them. He was therefore greatly surprised when, on finishing his speech, his Honour Judge Bordacsi roared at him in the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... beautiful little fairy groups that a painter could imagine. It consisted of a boy and two girls, the eldest not more than six, and lovely as seraphs. They were going the rounds of the house, and singing at every chamber-door; but my sudden appearance frightened them into mute bashfulness. They remained for a moment playing on their lips with their fingers, and now and then stealing a shy glance, from under their eyebrows, until, as if by one impulse, they scampered away, and as they turned an angle of ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... knock-down look out of her black eyes, and disappear in a rustle of silk, and with the revelation of an admirable foot and ankle. But these advances, so far from encouraging Mr. Scuddamore, plunged him into the depths of depression and bashfulness. She had come to him several times for a light, or to apologise for the imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his French promptly left him, and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... usually bear a proud, disdainful look. When redeemed by grace the fashionable dress and proud look give place to a sweet Christian modesty. A humble heart and a fashionable dress are incompatible. Shamefacedness is derived from aidos in the Greek, and has "modesty" and "bashfulness" ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... Jasper?" answered the girl, losing her own bashfulness in the natural and generous wish to relieve his embarrassment, though both reddened in a way to betray ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... growth, the child, whether boy or girl, shows less of initiative and aggressive self-assertion and less of an inclination to isolate himself and his interests from the domestic group in which he lives, and he shows more of sensitiveness to rebuke, bashfulness, timidity, and the need of friendly human contact. In the common run of cases this early temperament passes, by a gradual but somewhat rapid obsolescence of the infantile features, into the temperament of the boy ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... they read, and to be greatly interested in the scriptural stories of which their books were made up. They repeated verses from the Bible, and stanzas of poetry, all very eagerly and prettily. As bashfulness is scarcely known to their race, they had no hesitation in showing off their accomplishments before a stranger, and seemed quite delighted with his applause. They were not particularly quiet; perhaps ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... bridegroom's deputy gets the better of his opponent—yet only after the bridegroom himself has promised to be father and brother to his young wife, and to cherish her as the apple of his eye. Thereupon the maidens form a ring around the bride, sing songs to her to conquer her bashfulness, and so induce her to yield her hand to the bridegroom. After this the bridesmaids escort her to her new home—which in this case was represented by the little house that Aaron had secretly furnished for her. Neither Blanka nor Manasseh ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... teacher in the school, any more definitely English expression than a simper. Mr. Duncan stated that many of his pupils understood English very well, but were somehow averse to speaking it. The voices of the singers sounded very well, when allowance is made for their bashfulness. Some of their pieces were of a fugue character and the time which was kept in singing them was remarkably good, considering that there was no ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... who had lodged him. He then warned his friend Peele to amend his ways; but Peele, like him, died in distress and debt, one of the last letters he wrote being an imploring letter to Burleigh asking for relief,—"Long sickness," said he, "having so enfeebled me as maketh bashfulness almost impudency." Spenser died forsaken, and in want. Ben Jonson says of him that "he died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty broad pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex," adding, "he was sorrie he had ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... that myself and others took particular notice how those who were present dined; but to speak truth—whether for joy or sorrow I cannot tell—there was not one of them that half filled his belly; and certainly it could not have been from modesty or bashfulness before the King, for there was not one among them but had dined with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... flight; and a second time she paused. Then she turned about, and, with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance of timidity, drew near to the young man. He on his side continued to advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness. At length, when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim over, and she reached out both her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conversational abilities and immense power of small talk, so that Verdant felt quite at ease in her society, and found his natural timidity and quiet bashfulness to be greatly diminished, even if they were not altogether put on one side. They were always such capital friends, and Miss Patty was so kind and thoughtful in making Verdant appear to the best advantage, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the Middle Ages, there was then a healthy sensualism, that sprang from a rugged and happy native disposition among the people, and that Christianity was unable to suppress. The hypocritical prudery and bashfulness; the secret lustfulness, prevalent to-day, that hesitates and balks at calling things by their right name, and to speak about natural things in a natural way;—all that was foreign to the Middle Ages. Neither was that age familiar ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... singular, for the extraordinary, under whatever form, had long had no slight interest for me: and I had discernment enough to perceive that yon was no common man. Yet I went not near him, certainly not from bashfulness, or timidity, feelings to which I had long been an entire stranger. Am I to regret this? perhaps, for I might have learned both wisdom and righteousness from those calm, quiet lips, and my after-course might ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... crossing, and to ignore the young woman would be an avowal of enmity. Here was his opportunity. Harry set his face over the hopper and cradled industriously. He thought he was displaying proper firmness, but his hand trembled, his heart beat like a plunger, and he was the victim of an ignoble bashfulness. Chris approached with some timidity; but Maori bounded up to the young man, making elephantine overtures of friendliness, which were resented by Harry's cattle-dog Cop, who walked round and round the mastiff ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... What little bashfulness he had once possessed he had certainly left behind in San Francisco, for he leaned over the front of the box and ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... after eyeing the little figure before him in silence for some time, and when the temporary absence of Mr. Home from the room relieved him from the half-laughing bashfulness, which was all he knew of timidity—-"Mother, I see a young lady in the present society to whom I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... him forward, and introduced him to her guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations with a mixture of bashfulness and hauteur, half-awkward and half-graceful, and muttering some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost in reverie. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his aspect—which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was extremely slight and thin—his ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was doing there. She answered with a smile: "I am amusing myself by watching this worthy young man at his drawing; he is as good as he is handsome." I had by this time acquired a trifle of assurance, mixed, however, with some honest bashfulness; so I blushed and said: "Such as I am, lady, I shall ever be most ready to serve you." The gentlewoman, also slightly blushing, said: "You know well that I want you to serve me;" and reaching me the lily, told ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... doing of which it was necessary that a gig should be hired all the way from Prestwick. Herriot had not been anxious to go over, alleging various excuses,—the absence of dress clothes, the calls of Stone and Toddy, his bashfulness, and the absurdity of paying fifteen shillings for a gig. But he went at last, constrained by his friend, and a very dull evening he passed. Lizzie was quite unlike her usual self,—was silent, grave, and solemnly ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... loving and unselfish at the same time, his glance is projected downwards; and all things that are illumined by this double ray of light, nature conjures to discharge their strength, to reveal their most hidden secret, and this through bashfulness. It is more than a mere figure of speech to say that he surprised Nature with that glance, that he caught her naked; that is why she would conceal her shame by seeming precisely the reverse. What has hitherto been invisible, the inner life, seeks its salvation ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that our happiness, which has no resemblance to that of other people, should conform to the laws of the world? And yet I delight too much in your bashfulness, your religion, your superstitions, not to obey your lightest whim. What you do must be right; nothing can be purer than your mind, as nothing is lovelier than your face, which ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... transformed. Doffing his habit, Sir John Finett stood confessed before them. He knelt penitently before the king, humbly assuring his Majesty that he had been preparing this device, and many others, to please and surprise him; but that, through the bungling of some, and the bashfulness of others, he was obliged to enact the parts himself. This excuse the king was graciously pleased to accept, commending him for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... had begun with a fit of bashfulness. The knowledge that this was the crisis, and that all his friends looked to the result of the expedition, made him feel as if he were committing himself whenever he handed Isabel in or out of a carriage, and find no comfort except in ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recognised the fact that his frame was in a state of too great debility to struggle with the vigorous nature of his wife, and humiliating himself before his wife's virtue he resolved to let things take their course, relying a little upon the modesty, religion, and bashfulness of Blanche, but he always slept with one eye open, for he suspected that God had perhaps made virginities to be taken like partridges, to be spitted and roasted. One wet morning, when the weather was that ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... have, Crocker." That glass of hot whiskey-and-water, though it enhanced the melancholy tenderness of the young man, robbed him of his bashfulness, and loosened the strings of his tongue. "For three years! And there was a time when she worshipped the very stool on which I sat at the office. I don't like ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... of autocrat in intellect, revelling in all the confidence of his own great powers, a somewhat nearer observation enabled a common acquaintance at Venice[1] to detect, under all this, traces of that self-distrust and bashfulness which had marked him as a boy, and which never entirely forsook him through the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... not counted on this. He felt an absurd bashfulness tying his tongue. At length he ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... say. The most pernicious spirits Of hell he must have summoned to his aid, To cast this mist before your waking senses. Your ear no more was open to the voice Of friendly warning, and your eyes were shut To decency; soft female bashfulness Deserted you; those cheeks, which were before The seat of virtuous, blushing modesty, Glowed with the flames of unrestrained desire. You cast away the veil of secrecy, And the flagitious daring of the man O'ercame your natural coyness: you exposed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... impassive. He exhibits a reserve, diffidence, and even bashfulness, which is in some degree attractive, and leads the observer to thinly that the ferocious and bloodthirsty character imputed to the race must be grossly exaggerated. He is not demonstrative. His feelings of surprise, admiration, or fear, are never ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... become well enough acquainted with her husband so that she will not run away. The go-between returns the following day and claims her guerdon. Several cases passed under my observation, in which the husband was unable to use his marital rights for weeks owing to the timorousness and bashfulness of his youthful spouse. In no case was anything but patience and gentleness displayed ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... spectacled man emerged from the crowd, and, beaming with a pleasing elderly bashfulness through his spectacles, gave it as his opinion that though gorsoon was a term usually applied to the male child, it was equally applicable to the female. "But, indeed," he concluded, "the Bench has as good Irish as I have ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... losing his bashfulness, and now gazed all over the room, evidently much impressed by its ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... did not know what bashfulness was, 'I wish I might go and see him, too. I should so like to know if he has ever seen the island ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... was afflicted with grief. Unto her Vyasa said,—'Tell me, O blessed one, what is in thy mind. Tell me what thou wishest to say. At this, Kunti, bending her head unto her father-in-law, and overcome with bashfulness, said these words unto him, relating to the occurrences ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... restrained them with gentle remedies, he has given to boys the boon of plenty, to young men merriment, and to the old security. But now, Scipio, that I have come to touch on your merits, I fear lest either your own noble modesty or my own native bashfulness may close my mouth. But I cannot refrain from touching on a very few of the many virtues which we so justly admire in you. Citizens whom he has saved, show with me that ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... learned of right and wrong, vast property, enough to buy pardons for a thousand Doones, would be at their mercy. And since I was come to know Lorna better, and she to know me thoroughly—many things had been outspoken, which her early bashfulness had kept covered from me. Attempts I mean to pledge her love to this one, or that other; some of which perhaps might have been successful, if there had ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the major, I desired to change my clothing before supper, and was shown to a snug little room up stairs by a damsel of such exquisite beauty and bashfulness, that my whole soul seemed melting within me, so quickly did her charms enslave me. In answer to a question that hung trembling upon my lips, and which I had only power to put in broken accents, for she passed me the candle, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... from his chair and left the table; she rose with him and came around the side. He stopped on his way to the door, looking at her with awkward bashfulness as she stood there flushed and brilliant in her tossed state, scarcely ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... beauties were concerned, poor Lander led the very devil of a life of it. He certainly, as it would have been highly unbecoming in him, did not solicit the hand of any of the expectant beauties, and therefore, giving him all due credit for his extreme bashfulness and insuperable modesty, they were determined to solicit his; he was first twirled round by one beauty, then by another; at one moment he found himself in a state of juxta position with the old caboceer; at another, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... became Patsy's faithful companion, for the boy had lost his former bashfulness and fear of girls, and had grown to feel at ease even in the society of Beth and Louise. The four had many excursions and picnics into the country together; but Kenneth and Patsy were recognized as especial chums, and the other girls did not interfere in their ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... sense of bashfulness about it, but he followed his father, and in a few minutes more the rough, bearded, red-shirted fellows were giving him three of the most ringing cheers he had ever heard. Ha-ha-pah-no and Na-tee-kah looked at him with something that was half ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... very late, long after midnight probably; for of all the shadowy, flickering line of evening smokers that usually crowded that particular stretch of veranda only a single distant glow or two remained. Yet even now in the almost complete isolation of her surroundings the old inherent bashfulness swept over her again and warred chaotically with her insistent purpose. As stealthily as possible she crept along the dark wall to the one bright spot that flared forth like a lantern lens from the gay ballroom—crept along—crept along—a ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of Peterborough. "I was," says he, "about seventeen, when I first came to town; an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings out of the country with one: however, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who used to resort thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Men of as mean as my mean Abilities to have undertaken this. But indeed, my Lord, though I was ambitious enough of undertaking it; yet, as Sir Henry Wotton hath said in a Piece of his own Character, That he was condemn'd by Nature to a bashfulness in making Requests: so I find myself (pardon the Parallel) so like him in this, that if I had not had more Reasons then I have yet exprest, these alone had not been powerful enough to have created a Confidence in me to have attempted it. Two of my unexprest ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... he cried without bashfulness, "that I now perform the eminently interesting operation of dropping cakes—one, two, three. May the intelligent young lady return to ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... blood mounted to my face; and albeit I by no means doubted of my reply, he spared my bashfulness and went on with deep feeling: "But if he did so as your wedded husband, what aunt or gossip then might dare to blame him and his honored ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pressure to her side, and now her exquisite hand would dally with the ringlets on my forehead, and then its velvety softness would crumple up and indent my blushing cheek, that burned certainly more with pleasure than with bashfulness. I cannot say that the usher bore all this very stoically, but he betrayed his annoyance by his countenance only. His speech was as bland as ever. His trials were not yet over: at some very silly remark of mine the joyous widow pressed ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Mr. Bryan, inwardly highly amused at the girl's bashfulness in venturing in when she saw a stranger seated ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... now to where they were sitting, to select a flat boulder for spreading their table-cloth upon, and, amid the discussion on that subject, the matter pending between Knight and Elfride was shelved for a while. He read her refusal so certainly as the bashfulness of a girl in a novel position, that, upon the whole, he could tolerate such a beginning. Could Knight have been told that it was a sense of fidelity struggling against new love, whilst no less assuring as to his ultimate victory, it might have ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... character, ought to have the satisfaction of knowing that they have it, both as a reward and as an encouragement. They write, that you are not only 'decrotte,' but tolerably well-bred; and that the English crust of awkward bashfulness, shyness, and roughness (of which, by the bye, you had your share) is pretty well rubbed off. I am most heartily glad of it; for, as I have often told you, those lesser talents, of an engaging, insinuating manner, an easy ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of our ideas and beliefs does not indicate an established confidence in them but often half-distrust, which we try to hide from ourselves, just as one who suffers from bashfulness offsets his sense of inferiority and awkwardness by rude aggression. If, for example, religious beliefs had been really firmly established there would have been no need of "aids to faith"; and so with our business system to-day, our politics and international relations. We dread to ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... Catechism, and then examined them about the sense, and lastly urged them, with all possible engaging reason and vehemency, to answerable affection and practice. If any of them were stalled through ignorance or bashfulness, I forbore to press them, but made them hearers, and turned all into instruction and exhortation. I spent about an hour with a family, and admitted no others to be present, lest bashfulness should make it burdensome, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... in philosophical and religious studies. Once a year, says Horace Walpole, the good old man was carried to St. Paul's, to contemplate the glorious chef-d'oeuvre of his genius. Steele, in the Tatler, refers to Wren's vexations, and attributes them to his modesty and bashfulness. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... struggle, and he stands upon the veranda. On such occasions I make it a point to open the door myself, with a calmness and serenity that shall offer a marked contrast to his feverish and excited air, and shall throw suspicion of inebriety upon him. If he be inclined to timidity and bashfulness, during the best of the evening he is all too conscious of the disarrangement of his hair and cravat. If he is less sensitive, the result is often more distressing. A valued elderly friend once called upon me after undergoing a twofold struggle with the wind and a large Newfoundland ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... thus sharply rebuked. Bashfulness and apathy are a tough husk in which a delicate organization is protected from premature ripening. It would be lost if it knew itself before any of the best souls were yet ripe enough to know and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was admitted to her presence. She sat upon a rich musnud, and gracefully lifting up her veil welcomed the tailor, who was so overcome that he had nearly fainted away with excess of rapture. She desired him to be seated, but such was his bashfulness that he would not approach farther than the corner of the carpet. Coffee was brought in, and a cup presented him; but not being used to such magnificence and form, and his eyes, also, being staringly fixed on the beauties ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... Marcia. Two of her maidens were assisting: one who glanced up at Sergius and smiled tauntingly; and another who turned her face away, and seemed to be trying to hide it in the close inspection of a great bunch of fleece. But both the forwardness of the one and the bashfulness of the other were wasted upon the visitor. As a matter of fact, he was so lost in wonder at his courage and self-control as to be well past observing the idiosyncrasies of slaves; and, if his own ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... up her mind that she must see Alec before he went, but a secret bashfulness prevented her from writing to him. She was afraid that he would refuse, and she could not force herself upon him if she knew definitely that he did not want to see her. But with all her heart she wanted to ask his pardon. It would not be so hard to continue with the dreary burden which was ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... soul; his body worn out, not with age, but study and holy mortifications; his face full of heat-pimples, begot by his unactivity and sedentary life. And to this true character of his person, let me add this of his disposition and behaviour: God and Nature blessed him with so blessed a bashfulness, that as in his younger days his pupils might easily look him out of countenance; so neither then, nor in his age, did he ever willingly look any man in the face: and was of so mild and humble a nature, that his poor Parish-Clerk ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... suspended his poetry: but he was soon called back to labour by the death of the Chancellor, for his place then became vacant; and though the Lord Hardwicke delayed for some time to give it away, Thomson's bashfulness or pride, or some other motive perhaps not more laudable, withheld him from soliciting; and the new Chancellor would not give him what he would not ask. He now relapsed to his former indigence; but the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... than she had ever seen him, and another gentleman, of whom her eye took in only the general outlines of fashion and comfortable circumstances, now too strange to it to go unnoted. In Fleda's usual mood her next movement would have been made with a demureness that would have looked like bashfulness. But the amusement and pleasure of the day just passed had for the moment set her spirits free from the burden that generally bound them down; and they were as elastic as her step, as she came forward and presented to her aunt "Dr. Quackenboss," ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... retired to his own room, where he had just summoned Thames. Much to her annoyance, therefore, Winifred was left alone with the woollen-draper, who following up a maxim of his own, "that nothing was gained by too much bashfulness," determined to profit by the opportunity. He had only been prevented, indeed, by a fear of Mrs. Wood from pressing his suit long ago. This obstacle removed, he thought he might now make the attempt. Happen what might, he could not ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... on foot a search for the damsel in the forest, the lady summoned him to her presence, and he, forthwith obeying, and seeing Agnolella with her, was the happiest man that ever was. He yearned till he all but swooned to go and embrace her, but refrained, for bashfulness, in the lady's presence. And overjoyed as he was, the joy of the damsel was no less. The lady received him with great cheer, and though, when she had heard the story of his adventures from his own lips, she chid him not a little for having set at nought the wishes of his kinsfolk; yet, seeing ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that before the fine instincts of women his infirmity was especially conspicuous, and he drifted into misogyny through bashfulness and pride; and yet misogyny was incompatible with his scheme of life and his ambition. He felt himself to be worthy of the full diapason of home life; he desired to be as other men were, besides ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... he came near, but then I showed no sign; With all the meeting looking on, I held his hand in mine. It seemed my bashfulness was gone, now I was his for life; Thee knows the feeling, Hannah,—thee, too, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... at the opening of 1833, provided unquestionably with, a large stock of schoolboy bashfulness. The first time that business required me to go to the arm of the chair to say something to the Speaker, Manners Sutton—the first of seven whose subject I have been—who was something of a Keate, I remember the revival in me bodily of the frame of mind in which a schoolboy stands ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... whatever to promote his own candidacy. While not assuming airs of reluctance or bashfulness, he discouraged on the part of strangers any suggestion as to his reelection. Among his friends he made no secret of his readiness to continue the work he was engaged in, if such should be the general wish. "A second term would be a great honor and a great labor, which together, perhaps, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... which had all the airs and graces of a village coquette, together with the bashfulness of a school miss, seemed to Katie and Dolores, but especially Katie, a very rich and wondrous thing. She always knew that Mrs. Russell was a gushing, sentimental creature, but had never before seen her so deeply affected. But on this occasion the good lady ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... and his fat mamma, who sat on the counter. That lady fancied I was looking at her, though, as far as I could see, she had the figure and complexion of a roly-poly pudding; and so, with quite a premature bashfulness, she sent me a message by the shoemaker, ordering me to walk away if I had made my purchases, for that ladies of her rank did not choose to be stared at by strangers; and I was obliged to take my leave, though with sincere regret, for the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I sat again before her parlour organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red fingers, while she, beside me, made canvas mittens for ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... pretty Susan a wedding-dress, and any thing else she may need. Before a week is over you shall be mine host of the Keswick Inn. And now," she concluded, gayly, "go and make your arrangements with Susan, and don't let any foolish bashfulness on her part prevent you from hastening matters. It would not do for you to let this chance slip through your fingers. I will see that she is ready. Her ladyship has something for her too, and will not let her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... round Dick to congratulate him and examine the piece, he stood with a mingled feeling of bashfulness and delight at his unexpected good fortune. Recovering himself suddenly he seized his old rifle, and, dropping quietly to the outskirts of the crowd, while the men were still busy handling and discussing the merits of the prize, went up, unobserved, to a boy of about ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... pressed obtrusively around me. My protector held them back. I was half wild with embarrassment. I'm naturally a reserved and somewhat sensitive girl, and this American publicity made me crimson with bashfulness. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... were a prey to the most thrilling terrors. You were a moving picture of tender masculinity in distress. You let bashfulness like a worm i' th' bud prey upon your damask cheek. Have you a damask cheek? Stand out! I wish to consider you impartially. YOU needn't look at ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... generation depends so much on agreeable sensation, that, where the object is disgustful, neither voluntary exertion nor irritation can effect the purpose; which is also liable to be interrupted by the pain of fear or bashfulness. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... bath, and duly installing the vice-M. D. and her charges, Dr. Spencer departed; and Ethel was launched on an unknown ocean, as pilot to an untried crew. She had been told to regard Leonard's bashfulness as a rare grace; but it was very inconvenient to have the boy wretchedly drooping, and owning nothing amiss, apparently unacquainted with any English words, except 'Thank you' and 'No, thank you.' Indeed, she doubted whether the shyness were genuine, for stories were afloat of behaviour at ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... among the helpless sick. Females of rank seemed to forget their natural bashfulness, and committed the care of their persons, indiscriminately, to men and women of the lowest order. No longer were women, relatives or friends, found in the houses of mourning, to share the grief of the survivors; no longer was the corpse accompanied to the grave ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... And then by shamefaced bashfulness, by profane protest, by muttered and comprehensive curses I knew that my companion on the ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... Meanders lubricate the course they take; The modest speaker is asham'd and grieved To engross a moment's notice; and yet begs. Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts, However trivial all that he conceives. Sweet bashfulness! it claims at least this praise; The dearth of information and good sense, That it foretells us, always comes to pass. Cataracts of declamation thunder here; There forests of no meaning spread the page, In which all comprehension wanders lost; While ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... sick-room door was so near that Ramsey knew her mother was inside it, by her shadow on its glass. Suddenly, just as Hugh was about to say she need not hurry in—whereupon she would have vanished like a light blown out—she faced him. "D'you ever suffer from bashfulness—diffidence?" ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... it would mean everything to him. If she stayed away-why, then he would have to believe that, after all, the real Gertrudis Garavel had spoken last night at the opera, and that the sprightly, mirthful little maid who had bewitched him on their first meeting no longer existed. An odd bashfulness overtook him. It did not seem to him that it could possibly have been he who had talked to her so boldly only the evening before. At the thought of his temerity he felt almost inclined to flee, yet he would not have deserted his post for worlds. The sound of a voice shot through ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... at me with timid surprise. She made no answer; though that earnest, yet timid gaze, long remained, and for that matter, still remains, vividly impressed upon my recollection. It seemed to express astonishment, startled sensibility, feminine bashfulness, and maiden coyness; but it did not appear to me that it expressed displeasure. There was no time, however, to ask for explanations, since the voices of Herman Mordaunt and Bulstrode were now heard at the very door, and, at the next ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... v. feed him, or give him something to eat Ahgahwahta, n. a shadow Ahwashema, prep. beyond Ahgwewin, n. a garment Ahgookayowh, n. a bait, or something to allure animals to a snare Ahgahjewin, n. bashfulness Ahquahnebesohn, n. rainbow Azhenekahdaig, } n. name of a thing or place. In asking a question Adahming, } we say what is the name of ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... Tom, who with a ludicrous mixture of pleasure, bashfulness, and mock anger, had been listening to what he evidently deemed a high encomium; "that we hav'nt drinked yet; have you quit drink, Archer, since I was to York? What'll you take, Mr. Forester? Gin? yes, I have got some prime ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... appearance. He was even more sandy than his father. Indeed his hair and eyebrows were nearly white, but out of his red and almost full-moon face his mother's black eyes twinkled shrewdly. They now expressed only good-will and bashfulness. Every one of us shook hands with him so cordially that his boy's heart was ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... He looks rather like a revue-producer who has seen better nights. The Hero, overcome by bashfulness at being discovered in conversation with a female, conceals ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... evident that, with William, it was the first step that cost, and that, having once joined in social interests, he was able to pursue them with more or less pleasure. He was about sixty, and not young-looking for his years, yet so undying is the spirit of youth, and bashfulness has such a power of survival, that I felt all the time as if one must try to make the occasion easy for some one who was young and new to the affairs of social life. He asked politely if I would ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Brother, "nothing particular of his infancy: except the great share of bashfulness (or, as a Philosopher perhaps would say, pride) which he possess'd in common with the rest of the Family.... Exceedingly mild in his temper and kind to his play-mates, he was very apt ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... passed six delightful hours in her company—he was beginning to think much more than was good for him, unless he intended to begin thinking of her always. But he was still young enough to have a spice of bashfulness about him, and he did not want to seem too pushing or forward. Again, it seemed to him that the anonymous letter conveyed, in some subtle fashion, a hint that it was to be regarded as sacred and secret, and ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... any one who knows us will accuse either of us of bashfulness; the opposite has been laid to my charge until it has become an ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... going into the church?" he inquired, gazing at them complacently, yet with a mixture of bashfulness in his look—a sentiment not by any means the result of awe of their station, but only of appreciation of their elegance and youth. Before gentlemen—such as Moore or Helstone, for instance—William was often a little dogged; with proud or insolent ladies, too, he was quite ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... bidden "so long" to Mr Philp, and pocketed his three-and-sixpence, steered up the street in the direction of Rilla Farm, nervously stealing glimpses of himself in the shop windows as he went. As he hove in sight of the Custom House, however, this bashfulness gave way of a sudden to bewilderment. For there, at the foot of the steps leading up to its old-fashioned doorway lounged his mate, Mr ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... person, and the amiableness of her manners. Never had he seen a complexion so transparent, or an eye so expressive. Her vermeil-tinctured lips were new-blown roses that engrossed the sight, and seemed to solicit to be plucked. His heart was caught in the tangles of her hair. Such an unaffected bashfulness, and so modest a blush; such an harmonious and meaning tone of voice, that expressed in the softest accents, the most delicate sense and the most winning simplicity, could not but engage the attention of a swain so versed in the science of the fair as Roderic. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... modesty from humility in one case, I do not mean to confound it with bashfulness in the other. Bashfulness, in fact, is so distinct from modesty, that the most bashful lass, or raw country lout, often becomes the most impudent; for their bashfulness being merely the instinctive timidity of ignorance, custom soon changes ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... censure himself. Judith gave him her hand, but it was quite as much in gladness as with regret, while the two Delawares were not sorry to find he was leaving them. Of the whole party, Hetty alone betrayed any real feeling. Bashfulness, and the timidity of her sex and character, kept even her aloof, so that Hurry entered the canoe, where Deerslayer was already waiting for him, before she ventured near enough to be observed. Then, indeed, the girl came into ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... affections, relating the impressions of the environment with one another and with our impulses in quite different ways from those mere associations of coexistence and succession which are practically all that pure empiricism can admit. Take the love of drunkenness; take bashfulness, the terror {187} of high places, the tendency to sea-sickness, to faint at the sight of blood, the susceptibility to musical sounds; take the emotion of the comical, the passion for poetry, for mathematics, or for metaphysics,—no ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... without any bashfulness or apparent regret. 'I told you I would give you a cow,' said he ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... by natural timidity. This sentiment is especially strong in children. The sentiment of sexual modesty in man thus rests on timidity and on the fear of not doing as others do. It betrays itself toward women by awkwardness and bashfulness behind which eroticism is often ill concealed. The timid and bashful man carefully endeavors to hide his sexual feelings from others. The object of modesty is in itself immaterial to the psychology of this sentiment, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... flushing up again, though now more from the heat of argument than from the feeling of bashfulness which at first oppressed him, "it is my duty to celebrate ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... impenetrable, yet which everybody saw through, were very pleasing to our benefactor, who gave every day some new proofs of his passion, which, though they had not risen to proposals of marriage, yet we thought fell but little short of it; and his slowness was attributed sometimes to native bashfulness, and sometimes to his fear of offending his uncle. An occurrence, however, which happened soon after, put it beyond a doubt that he designed to become one of our family; my wife even regarded it ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... withal, but useth plainly her own with such shift as nature, craft, experience, and following of other excellent doth lead her unto, and if she want at any time (as being imperfect she must) yet let her borrow with such bashfulness that it may appear, that if either the mould of our own tongue could serve us to fashion a word of our own, or if the old denizened words could content and ease this need we would not ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
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